Cereal products, particularly ready-to-eat (hereinafter “R-T-E”) breakfast cereals, are well-known and popular food items, particularly presweetened R-T-E cereals. Typically, such products include various coatings usually comprising nutritive carbohydrate sweeteners such as sucrose, sugar alcohols, corn syrup, dextrose, polydextrose, fructose, high fructose corn syrup, fiber syrups, grain syrups, honey, hydrogenated starch, inulin, molasses, polyols, rice syrups, sorghum syrup, etc. Also known are presweetened R-T-E cereals comprising coatings that include a high potency sweetener (See for example, U.S. Pat. No. 4,378,377, issued Mar. 29, 1983, entitled “Cereal Presweetened With Aspartame And Method Of Preparation,” and U.S. Pat. No. 4,540,587, issued Sep. 10, 1985, entitled “Cereal Presweetened With Aspartame And Cold Water Soluble Gum Coating And Method Of Preparation,” each to Gajewski).
Presweetened breakfast cereals are typically prepared by first producing unsweetened cereal pieces, coating the cereal pieces with an aqueous slurry or solution of sweeteners, and then drying the coated pieces in an oven or air current to remove the added moisture.
One problem with sugar coated R-T-E cereals is the high amount of sugar in the finished product that is necessary to impart sweetness and assist in maintaining the desired texture in milk, referred to as bowl life. As used herein, “sugar” includes mono- and disaccharides such as glucose, fructose, maltose, lactose, and sucrose, but most commonly means sucrose, otherwise known as table sugar. The sugar content of R-T-E cereals can be reduced by substituting sugar with one or more high potency artificial sweeteners such as aspartame, saccharin, and sucralose, and/or by using natural sweeteners such as low conversion corn syrups or corn syrup solids. While useful in reducing the sugar content of R-T-E cereals, the finished products containing such substitutes often suffer from the absence of certain physical and organoleptic attributes provided by the presence of sugar-based coatings. In particular, the products can lack the bite or crispness and bowl life in milk exhibited by sugar coatings and require special packaging to minimize water absorption.
Those skilled in the art will appreciate that low conversion corn syrups and syrup solids are particularly useful sugar substitutes because they are less expensive than sucrose—averaging about (˜) ⅓ the price per pound for sucrose. In addition, corn syrups' physical properties, namely their hygroscopicity, tendency to resist crystallization, and adhesiveness, make them useful binders in products such as cereal bars. Corn syrups, especially low conversion corn syrups, are particularly useful processing agents in sugar slurries because they slow the crystallization of sucrose and prevent food pieces from crumbling.
To meet certain manufacturing efficiencies, however, the amount of corn syrup used must be kept in careful balance with other ingredients. For example, because corn syrup lacks the crystalline structure of sucrose, cereal pieces coated with corn syrup in excess of ˜20% of the dry weight basis of the R-T-E cereal formulation will stick together and clump in doublets or triplets. These clumps are undesirable in the finished product and must be removed before packaging, which reduces production yield. Corn syrup also reduces production efficiencies by increasing the time and capital equipment necessary to sufficiently lower the moisture content of the cereal pieces to desirable levels. Another drawback of using a low conversion corn syrup as a sugar substitute is its tendency to take up moisture (hygroscopicity) requires that cereals including corn syrup must be shielded from humidity with special packaging.
Given the state of the art as described above, there is a continuing need for improved reduced-sugar coatings and for coated comestibles prepared therewith that have physical and organoleptic properties similar to those coatings with more sucrose.
The present invention satisfies this need by providing coating compositions or binders with reduced sugar levels comprising polysaccharides with three or more monosaccharide subunits such as maltotriose and maltotetrose, and at least one high potency sweetener, as well as reduced sugar comestibles topically coated or bound with such compositions, such as R-T-E cereals, clusters, cereal bars, and other food products.